An affiliate manager must strive to constantly improve themselves and their operations to keep a successful affiliate program. The industry is based online, which is constantly evolving, so you and your affiliate business must evolve with it.
If you are looking to improve your management skills or how you operate, take a look at these tips to help your affiliate marketing business grow.
Do your research
Make sure you have an extensive knowledge of any and all products and brands you intend to market before you launch your affiliate program. Look into the industry the product is for and look for any competitors on the market. Find out who they are targeting and how they are approaching their audience.
Learn all you can about the product or service itself, as different features might appeal to different demographics. Learn your general knowledge about the industry. What worked or is working? What didn’t work? The more you know, the easier it will be to reach for answers and come up with strategies.
Choose your affiliate partners carefully
You should always be looking for new affiliate partners, which makes it handy that new ones are constantly hitting the market. Always recruiting means that you won’t have to rely on the same affiliates forever, should something fall through. That is why it’s important to keep your affiliate partners diverse. Don’t rely on the one type of affiliate to drive traffic to your site. Maybe the market surprised you, and a certain audience in fact isn’t interested in your product, or another is. Tap into a wide range of genres and platforms and you will get a wide range of eyes on your product, then you can hone in on what is working as your affiliate data comes in, indicating an engaged audience.
Keeping your affiliates themselves engaged is also a priority of an affiliate manager. Activate your affiliates by creating a stable relationship from the start. Approach with transparency and welcoming and allow for support along the way. Personalise your initial communication with them, proving to them that it is in fact them that you want, because they did so well in a particular past project, or their ongoing work is impressive. Keep communication open by allowing them to contact either you or your team with any queries or concerns. Be ready with any material they need to get started on promoting you right away.
Strategize as you go
Constantly updating and improving your campaign is the key to success in most industries. You won’t succeed if you don’t grow and growing is about learning what is working and what isn’t.
Regularly evaluate your program for ways to make it better, either for partners or to engage an audience. If you find that seasonality affects your product, plan key promotions around the time. Share a quarterly calendar that will allow your partners to see when you consider key promotional dates.
Consider offering exclusive offers to your partners? Take a look at how their affiliate links are performing and chose the ones with the highest traffic to give an exclusive offer to or offer them a product to review for their audience.
Nurture your relationships
It is important to keep good relationships with your affiliate partners, if not only for the simple reason that if their opinion of you sours, so will their opinion of the product. Whether they mean it or not, their promotion of your product will also come across as disingenuous. But there is more reason to keep a good relationship beyond bad acting skills. An affiliate partnership is a mutually beneficial relationship, so it is in the best interest of both of you to grow, and that keeping your affiliates engaged with your work will encourage that.
As mentioned above, reassure your affiliates that they can approach you will problems by keeping communication open. Offer a means of contact to you and your team and be sure that someone addresses your affiliate partners issues in a timely manner.
As affiliate manager, you should regularly catch up with your affiliates in meetings. This allows them a moment to address anything that is bothering them, like a result they were expecting to be better, and for you to assess your partnership and gain insights and ideas from your affiliates. Plus, a face-to-face interaction will allow your affiliate to feel more at ease.
Appear at conferences and industry events. Your affiliates will know that you are taking this seriously, enough to show up yourself rather than sending a team member, and you will have the opportunity to meet industry peers and network. Learn from the people around you and adapt them into your own program.
For more information on affiliate marketing, or for more personalised advice, book a free call with a member of our team.
